On the eve of the First Test, few would bet on the boys in the baggy green
caps to defeat England

In the southern summer of 2006-7, Australia welcomed England’s cricketers as only Australia would welcome a visiting sports team. The TAB (the national bookmaker) plastered the country with a poster depicting a kangaroo, holding a bat and wearing a baggy green cap, standing on a lion-skin rug. “It’s not cricket,” sneered the caption. “It’s revenge.”

Such assurance. Such swagger. It was, it turned out, justified. Australia destroyed England, reducing the side that had triumphed so magnificently in that extraordinary Ashes series of 2005 to a whimpering litter of shaky-kneed, wobbly lipped, teary-eyed spectres.

It seems much longer ago than six years. Like, I’m sure, many fellow Aussie expats, I have been preparing for this Ashes series not by looking forward to a good summer’s gloating, but by contemplating yurt rentals in Mongolia. Since thrashing England in such imperious style, Australia have contrived to lose the two Ashes series since. In 2009, England won 2-1, including their first Ashes victory at Lord’s since 1934. In 2010-11, England won 3-1, and each of those victories was by more than an innings.

As England fans with memories longer than four years will be aware, it is not pleasant to anticipate an Ashes series in the brace position, but for an Australian, it is very difficult. I’m aware that brash self-confidence is not necessarily among my people’s most attractive characteristics, but there is some mitigating context. Australia’s general high opinion of itself is a relatively recent development. In the Sixties and Seventies, Australians reflexively referred to Britain as “home”, whether or not they’d ever been there. When I left Australia in 1990, a feeling still lingered that staying was, as Barry Humphries put it, like going to a party and dancing with your mother.

This inferiority complex, known as the cultural cringe, is now gone, and good riddance. On the cricket field, it never existed. The foundation myth of the Ashes is England’s incredulity at being surprised by Australia at the Oval in 1882. The first Australian to become globally famous was a cricketer who made his reputation tormenting England (the postal address of Australia’s state broadcaster, ABC, is PO Box 9994, in honour of Sir Donald Bradman’s batting average).

When England sought to combat Bradman with the infamy of “bodyline” in 1932-33, Australians discovered an independent streak: their cricketing authorities even sent the MCC a cable including the word “unsportsmanlike”. And I’d argue that some of Australia’s robust modern self-image is rooted in the great team of the early Seventies, Ian Chappell’s gang of cocky larrikins with Zapatista moustaches, their disdain for traditional English virtues exemplified by the terrifying fast bowler Jeff Thomson: “Stuff that stiff-upper-lip crap. Let’s see how stiff it is when it’s split.” Those were the days.

Much of Australia’s present disrepair is cyclical, inevitable. The downside of being able to field the greatest side in history season after season, as Australia was throughout the Nineties and early 21st century, is that coming generations struggle to develop.

This squad labours in long shadows. And it faces a terrific England team, led by Alastair Cook, who may come to be remembered as your greatest batsman. I’m not confident. I’m not even optimistic. Even speaking as someone unconcerned by rugby, it is hard not to perceive ominous portent in the Lions series.

But I remain as complete a failure of the Tebbit Test as ever came over here and insisted on cheering the sportsmen of his homeland. If not this summer, there will be others. And maybe, back in the old country, bowling at or batting before three rickety stumps in his family’s yard, there’s a promising eight-year-old preparing to live up to the middle names Hayden Langer Ponting Clarke Waugh Waugh Gilchrist Warne Lee Gillespie McGrath.